The Stars Bear a Heavy Burden
by GenesisArclite
Summary: The Crucible never fires. The Reapers continue their harvest to its completion. After the Normandy crash-lands on an alien world, the survivors must live in a silent galaxy, subsisting on the hope that everything they did will not, eventually, in the distant future, mean nothing. Refusal ending. Freewrite.


_**The Stars Bear a Heavy Burden**_

There were so many of them that they blotted out the blues of Earth far below, descending like locusts, devouring and destroying everything in their path. The Crucible, docked, simply stood out like a testament to their failures, glittering in the sunlight while the planet turned black. They waited a long time, she knew, for some sort of signal – some sign that Shepard had _lived_ , or _won_ , something, _anything_ – but no familiar voice came across the increasing chaos on the radiowaves.

"Jeff," she remembered saying, opening her mouth, croaking a bit, voice cracking and falling like shards of glass as she thought of her friend, too far away to help, probably dead, "we _have_ to go."

"No!" Their pilot was all rage and grief. He knew it was hopeless. "I'm not leaving Shepard here, there's still time for some sort of _sign_... that he..."

"Jeff," she said. They had been here too long already. "We _must_ leave. There might be hope elsewhere."

Joker stared blankly at the _Normandy_ 's controls. "There's... still time."

A flash drew their attention to a point beyond the window. Admiral Hackett's ship, sheared in half by a blast of red from a descending Reaper, pieces flying as it flew without caring through the debris left behind. More ships died in its path; panic flowed through the airwaves, scarring the solar winds, until she reached over and pressed the switch to disable the noise. Her heart couldn't bear it.

"Did... did he just... is he _gone_?" Even in the silence, Tali could barely be heard.

"There was always a high probability that this mission would not end in success." EDI broke the quiet only after a few moments, and from the softness of her tone, she understood what was happening all too well. "Jeff, Liara is right. We _have_ to leave the area before we too are destroyed."

Joker was shaking. "We can't just _leave_."

"It's not a matter of 'can' or 'can't'," Liara said to him, gripping his shoulder, though not hard enough to snap any bones. "Right now, it's just something we have to _do_. If the Crucible ends up firing, then everything here won't be for nothing, but that doesn't matter if _we don't see another day_."

No one said anything for a while, and Tali tightly interlocked her fingers.

Liara looked at her, feeling her heart tighten. Shepard had been her friend, but to Tali, he had been so much more, though she didn't always speak of him in such a way. It had been a quiet sort of affair despite the teasing between them when around others, and yet, even now, the quarian kept her strength.

How long until they crumbled, including her?

Joker swung the _Normandy_ away from the madness, the explosions in the high atmosphere silent blasts of color and light – a cacophony of death, something she couldn't quite tear her eyes away from. As they shot away from Earth, she saw the tails of the _Destiny Ascension_ explode and go flying into space, propelled by the force of the explosions that rocked the cruiser. As they made a beeline for the Charon Relay, they passed more Reapers, indiscernible against the blackness of space except for pinpricks of light in different colors, their limbs arranged in all different shapes, some of them tipped in glowing red, indicating charged weapons.

They exited the relay into a hailstorm of warfare; Liara wasn't sure exactly where they had come out at first, but she quickly realized it was the turian's system. Ships of all different kinds were engaged in combat between Palaven and the moons, and the planet itself had turned mostly red and yellow.

Burning, as the Reapers began to bombard it.

"Why did you drop out here?" someone – she didn't know who – demanded.

"I didn't! Something pulled us–" The _Normandy_ shuddered as something collided with it. She didn't dare try to consider the odds of that happening, not with the IFF still on board.

They looked up to see a Reaper, the ship having scraped one of its legs as they opened up.

For the moment, they were ignored.

"That's it, we're getting out of here, and I don't care where!" Their pilot pushed buttons and waved his hands as he finished, and she finally understood he was trying to tell them to strap in and brace themselves. She did as he asked, thinking of nothing but her own survival, of keeping everyone safe, and prayed to whoever or whatever could hear her – hear _them_ – for some kind of miracle.

The ship rocketed away from the madness and sprang to FTL, and for a few minutes, everything was silent.

* * *

The next time she woke from her fitful nap, nothing moved anymore. She groaned and sat up against her restraints before unsnapping and tossing them aside. The ship was quiet, and when she made her way to the cockpit, it was empty. The CIC, also, was empty, so she descended and wondered why no one had told her what was going on. In the hangar, she found her crew, sitting on boxes with the lights low, talking in very low voices. They looked at her with tired eyes when she approached.

"You forget about me?" she said, meaning it teasingly, but she couldn't make it come out that way.

"We kind of did," was Ashley's response. "We all panicked."

"Why?" Concerned, she stepped into the circle of dim light and looked all around. "Wh... _what_ , exactly, is going on? Why aren't we moving? Are we in space?" She hadn't been able to see outside, as the cockpit's shutters had been closed.

"Not anymore." Garrus spoke this time. "We ended up on... some planet, in a neighboring system."

Liara didn't want to ask, but did. "How?" she said, voice small.

"Reaper in orbit attacked us, saw right through the IFF without us even doing anything. Blasted us right out of the sky and blew out the engines. Without a _lot_ of work, the _Normandy_ won't ever fly again." Joker said all of this with his head down, staring at the grille between his feet.

She wrung her hands, mind reeling from the implications. Normally, the ship needed to make a fuss somehow to draw the attention of the Reapers due to the IFF. If they had been spotted and attacked regardless, something had changed. Something bad. She opened her mouth, but couldn't speak.

Everyone exchanged looks. "We have been on this planet for two hours, twenty-three minutes," EDI said. "I have checked the conditions. They are lush, and capable of supporting life. If we must make camp here, however, we may have to move quickly if the Reapers approach the crash site."

"They haven't already?" she asked.

"They may already know they disabled us," EDI pointed out. "If so, they also know we will need a great deal of time to repair the engines. We have not taken extensive note of the damage as of yet." She hesitated, then said, "The ship is damaged enough that I cannot access much of my hardware. Power is auxiliary and emergency only, and many conduits automatically closed to prevent further damage."

Garrus shook his head and shifted his weight from foot to foot. "So, now what, we just sit here?"

"No." Liara balled her hands into fists. "We survive."

* * *

It only took ten minutes – or so – before the Reapers descended upon the crash site. Surrounded as they were by a sea and thickly-wooded hills with sheer cliffs scattered about, the nearest dreadnought landed nearly a mile away, straddling a peak and sitting lopsided. Its sound echoed out to them, a blare of skull-piercing noise that made her feel both sickened and awed. As the troopers began to descend out of a carrier and a second dreadnought landed nearer the horizon, Liara wanted to fight, but knew they couldn't.

But could they live by _running_?

"There is a chance we can use the woods for cover!" EDI shouted to them. "We must go!"

They left the _Normandy_ at a dead sprint, EDI helping Joker as best they both could go, as he was the only one who had trouble keeping up. As they headed into the thick undergrowth and struggled over the natural obstacles of the forest, the pace began to slow, and the Reaper blared again.

"No, EDI, _no_! You go! You live!" And their pilot stopped in place, nearly landing on his knees as EDI tried to encourage him to continue forward, but Joker refused, forcing her to let go. "If I stay behind, they might only think it was me, and I'm just gonna slow you down, anyway."

Chakwas, who had been helping Joker also, stopped beside him, taking his arm gently. "Jeff, now–"

"Don't try to talk me out of it, Karin," he growled through his teeth, yanking out of her grip. Liara winced as she imagined microfractures forming at the movement. Not that it would matter, shortly, if he got what he wanted. As he turned and began to shuffle back the way they came, Chakwas stayed with him, shaking her head when the others tried to stop her, and EDI stumbled back, looking confused.

Liara felt her heart clench, eyes filling with tears, knowing it would be the last time they ever saw him or the doctor, two people who had been there since the beginning.

"Joker!" she cried out, trying to keep her feet planted. No, no, no, _no_. "Joker! Jeff, _no_! You don't have to go back, you can stay! We'll make sure– we'll– somehow we'll– _Joker_!" Her vision blurred, but she saw him stop long enough to turn around and wave at her, arms dark shapes against the cracks in the canopy showing sky, before he turned away and kept going. She lunged, not knowing exactly why, and something caught her around the waist, pulling her back; she clutched at it with both hands, a broken sob escaping her lips.

Of all the people to die first, _of all of them_ , not these two, _not these two_.

"Please!" she thought she said, before being pushed back.

Again the Reapers blared, and the whole world seemed to fold in on itself, briefly. She clutched at her head and tried to battle it out of her mind. _Everything_ about the Reapers – their awe-inspiring size and presence, the sound of their moving limbs and the evil noise that rang out, the hypnotic stare of their red eyes and the sheen of their carapaces – drew their prey in, inducing a trance that inevitably led to indoctrination.

 _Not me_ , she thought to herself. _Not me. I stay free_.

They ran deep into the hills, their sole Prothean crew member, who had been grimly silent this entire time, bringing up the rear, near her. Garrus led the way, followed closely by Ashley and Tali. Everyone strung out in a ragged line, following the path paved by their leaders. In the back of her mind, Liara knew it was a bad idea to just run in a straight line, so she was glad of Javik finding various other paths to break up their tracks – streams, cliffs, tall grass, _anything_ he could find at all.

But when they heard the shriek of a Banshee, they had to break apart, each running in a different direction. The carrier had deployed troops, and now they streaked into the forest. Marauders made odd growling sounds while at least one Brute could be heard snorting. From the sound of it, there weren't that many troops. No doubt the Reapers had not anticipated more than the tiny crew the _Normandy_ had been carrying up to now. They wouldn't send any more than were absolutely necessary.

She didn't know for how long she ran, but eventually, she couldn't anymore, falling to her hands and knees in thick, rich mud that smelled of earth and living things, struggling to draw deep breaths into lungs that burned as though they had been set alight. The mud formed a swath of blackish stuff all around her, interspersed with trees whose roots plunged into it and out of it, cleanly, like the flowing architecture of her dead homeworld. Seedlings on fluffy white sails floated lazily through the air. Sunlight scattered all around her.

As she tried to breathe, her eyes filled with tears again, and she bowed her head closer to the mud, digging her fingers in, heedless of its filth, and wept softly.

Chakwas had been one of the first humans to be unconditionally kind to her, and she had also known what needed to be done to care for an asari properly. She'd been firm, of course, but understanding, even as Liara bowed her head a lot and tripped over her own tongue, not knowing how to carry on a conversation without leaving gaps one of the two had to fill. When all had been said and done, she'd sent Liara off with a clean bill of health, water, and a bit of nutritious food.

And Joker, with his awful jokes about every Citadel species, insistence that he was _the best_ pilot in the Alliance, bar none, and never let any of them forget that. Asking about the "tentacle-things" on her head. Appreciating when she tried to reassure him about missing, likely dead, his sister and father. Getting them through every scrape, one way or another, sometimes with uncertainty, but always intact.

And all of that was without getting into Shepard.

Liara finally forced herself to stop and settled back on her heels, looking all around. Her surroundings were quite beautiful, reminding her of the park where she'd lived on Thessia, a dazzling tapestry of shadows and patterns of golden sunlight interspersed with bright colors indicating flowers and alien insects. A rivulet ran through it all, no doubt indicating the presence of some near-surface spring that moistened the earth.

Nearly slipping several times, Liara climbed to her feet and wiped off the biggest chunks of mud, shifting her mind to that of survival. The bright white of her outfit stood out too much. She would need to change it out and do something about her skin if she was going to survive.

After darkening her armor as much as she could with mud and bits of organic things, she headed for a place somewhere above the trees so that she could better see what was happening. A huge tree became her vantage point; she clambered up into its thick branches to survey the area.

The two dreadnoughts were still present, but had not moved, swaying a bit on their legs. They had not made any noise for some time. Staying carefully tucked behind branches, leaves, and moss, she shifted to a more comfortable position and looked down at the forest. Through gaps in the canopy, she saw the troops moving around, spreading out, and wondered what had become of the others.

The sun tracked across the sky, followed by a far smaller one, and both had dipped below the horizon, bringing nightfall, before one of the dreadnoughts finally rose into the sky and into space. The other still sat, swaying, its glowing eye hidden behind the armored plates without any red to be seen. Reaper troops made noises far below as she shifted her weight, sore from being in one place so long. For a very long time, long into the next day, she waited in the same spot, sleeping lightly and startling at the smallest sound. Only when the second dreadnought rocketed off into space did she finally breathe out properly.

Swallowing and trying not to think about the lost, she climbed down to the ground again. Joker had either been turned into a Husk or killed and tossed aside. Chakwas, too. And what of the others? Had Javik been subjected to the same fate as the rest of his species? No – he would die before than happened. James, Garrus, EDI... what about them? Were they still alive? Or were they gone?

 _Stop thinking about it_ , she demanded of herself, and she wandered into the forest.

She walked in the direction of the crash, not daring to call out in case any Reaper forces had been left behind, trying not to take the straightest path there. Since they had all scattered, she knew that either they would return to the crash site to rendezvous, or she would simply never see them again, regardless of their fate. After a long trek, she arrived in the clearing the _Normandy_ had created and found several dragon's teeth awaiting her, two with human shapes impaled upon them.

Liara flinched at the sight. She couldn't use her sidearm. It would draw attention. Instead, she used her biotics, lifting them off after a great deal of struggle, and with all her remaining strength, she flung them over the cliff and into the alien sea, not wanting a closer look, and gasped for breath.

If the impact didn't kill them or break their bodies, the sea would – hopefully – drown them.

"Liara," came a voice; she looked to see EDI stepping into the clearing. Dirty and scratched, EDI did not look like the pride of Cerberus, but a mech left to waste on a distant world.

Perhaps that _was_ what she had become.

"No others yet," she murmured. "Are there any Reapers left?"

"There is a small chance." EDI had reduced the volume of her voice, leaving it a near-whisper. "I recommend keeping voices low for now. We cannot be sure as of yet." Her eyes drifted to the dragon's teeth. "I see they had planned to reuse us if they had caught us."

"Yes." She winced. "I found two bodies on them, so I threw them in the sea. Don't know who they were. I don't want to."

EDI nodded, not needing to say anything.

For several days, the two made do with what they could find. EDI analyzed where she could with what processing power was contained within her body, and Liara found several fruits, tubers, and small animals she could eat. She scavenged rations from the _Normandy_ and whatever technology she could pry off the walls, returning every day, several times a day, and still finding no signs of other survivors. Some distance away, she found an ancient lava tube, nestled near the mud and the spring, she could narrowly fit into that she hauled all her bits and pieces into. In there, she lit a fire to keep warm when the night grew a little chilly and put together everything she could. At the slightest sound, she doused the fire and stayed silent.

One day, she returned to the crash site to find Garrus poking around inside the ship. After a standoff that lasted a few moments, he realized it was her. "This has been the worst week of my life," he told her, and he looked it, his armor scratched and covered in bits of organics. "I found Javik, but he refused to come out of a little fortress of rocks he found, so I left him. No sign of the others."

"I'm sure they're alright," Liara said, though she didn't fully believe it yet.

Garrus grunted, his eyes solemn. "Yeah. Probably."

The three made camp in her cave. EDI networked what hardware she had been able to pull out and power up, gathering ever more information. They found the _Normandy_ 's black box, but it didn't tell them a lot they didn't already know, though it provided information about their flight path and telemetry. They had indeed landed on an uncharted world neighboring the turian's home system, and information from scans as they had come closer showed it was covered in various types of terrain – the subtropics, where they were located; huge seas, deserts, meadows, and massive mountains; and iced-over poles. It had four large moons and several much smaller ones, faint, dusty rings, and binary suns.

"Maybe we can get the _Normandy_ patched up and get out of here," Garrus said one day.

"That will prove difficult," EDI told him. "The engines were severely damaged, and hull integrity has been greatly affected by the landing. We have also removed many components, and others are simply missing."

"Still worth a try," Liara said. "Here, EDI, hand me that power cable.

* * *

Days later, they found Tali, living off the rations on the _Normandy_ and hopeful that the planet supported her dextro-amino chemistry, but fell silent when she discovered it did not. With rations halfway gone and being split between her and Garrus, the future instantly dimmed. Liara felt as though someone had punched her in the gut, over and over, as she sat cross-legged beside her fire and watched her two friends consume as little as possible from the rations as was necessary to stay alive. She hated the war. She hated the Reapers. She hated that so much of the crew had vanished, either killed in the crash, or by Reapers, or simply having disappeared. She hated that it was going to take away more of her friends.

"We need to get off this planet," Liara said, beginning to feel the stress pressing down on her. "If you two are going to live, we _have_ to get the _Normandy_ moving again."

"Not likely," EDI said.

Liara didn't want to hear it. "So, what, we just sit here until we _die_?"

"We're stronger than you give us credit for, T'Soni," Garrus told her firmly. "Just wait a while, okay? We'll be alright, one way or another. Don't worry so much."

They tried to fix the ship. They worked on conduits, power cables, scavenged parts and repaired the hull with the few tools that were left. They drug out and buried bodies – too many, she thought. They went into graves marked with smooth river rocks on the hillside overlooking the crash, where they could, as she imagined it, look out over the beautiful world and the ship that had been their home, now their grave. No matter how long they worked, however, the survivors always found something else wrong. Too few cables. Not enough power. Holes punched in the outer hull. Parts missing from random places.

And then, when they found the power core itself cracked, its mass effect fields no longer functioning, she knew it was over before EDI confirmed it.

Deep in her heart, Liara hated the Reapers and wanted them all dead. She had never before been consumed with such raw grief before. Even if she lived, Garrus and Tali would starve to death. Javik, if he was still out there, would eventually die or get himself killed. James and any other surviving humans would die long before she did. And EDI's power would, sooner or later, just give out.

Sooner or later, she would be alone, the last will and testament to this nightmare cycle of the Reapers.

* * *

Days turned into weeks. Reality settled in. One way or another, this planet would be their graves. They weren't going to leave, and as far as they could tell, they were the only civilization of any kind.

Liara wandered a lot, coming across strange primate-like creatures in the trees and fish-like animals that spent their time in the mud before diving into it and vanishing before she could get close enough. Would any of them become the masters of the next cycle? Which would discover the mass relays, the Citadel, spread out among the stars? Would they find her plans for the Crucible and succeed where they had failed?

Liara still had the original prototype of the capsule she had shown to Shepard. She buried it deep in the hillside, inside another lava tube, and marked it with a bluish rock arranged in a way that would be impossible to come about naturally. She left it with Glyph, who was non-functional, as she had removed his power source to use in an attempt to make something to power EDI with.

One day, as the rations ran low, Garrus left for a hunt and simply never returned. Liara didn't dig a grave, but she laid a headstone, barely able to see it through her blurred vision and burning eyes.

Tali ate very little, below the bare minimum. She tried some of the food of this world, but most passed right through her, giving very little nutrition. Some of it simply made her sick. Looking frail through her suit, Tali laid down one night, having barely spoken that week, and when she didn't wake up the next day, no matter how Liara shook her and pleaded with her to, she, too, joined the others in the ground.

She eventually came across Javik, hiding in his fortress. He spoke little, listening as she droned on about what had happened since the crash. Javik was no comforter. He was a soldier, brutish, straightforward, honest, and he couldn't say anything to help, but when he came down and laid both hands on her shoulders, all four eyes narrowing and expression tightening, and she sensed him drawing on how she felt _right then_ , and his hands gripped her tighter, she knew he understood better than anyone.

"You have done well making it this far, Liara," he said to her often, careful to use her name, never referring to her by her species unless he berated her. He came out of his fortress and visited her in her cave while she tinkered with things and tried to come up with a way to keep EDI powered when her cells finally began to lose their capacity. Neither of them had seen anyone else, and there were no signs of any Reapers.

Liara began to mark the days by scratching them as tick marks in the walls of her cave. She quickly realized how tedious this would be and how her walls would be carpeted in them by the time the end of her life came, and she continued anyway.

Months later, Javik never left the cave, or her side. He hunted with her, studied the technology with her, talked with her, and even tried to make conversation with EDI, calling her by her name. Emboldened by the continued lack of Reaper presence, Liara began to explore further and farther, sometimes traveling for hours. Her armor was gone, replaced by animal skins, as was his.

Finding a trap left by someone other than them, she laid a piece of hull metal beside it, hoping it would send a clear enough message, and continued on.

At midday, she found burrows and two-legged creatures near around them, using crude tools and speaking to one another in a garbled mess of growls and snorts, but it was a language. They reminded her of the creatures on Thessia, but when she tried to approach, they threw rocks at her and waved what appeared to be weapons in the air, forcing her to retreat despite her curiosity.

"Here we go!" Liara said. She held up her crudely-crafted, but functional, prototype battery, a joint creation of herself and Javik, and presented it to EDI. "This can be recharged using the sun, or, if I can get it working, hydroelectric power. It won't run forever, but when the time comes, it can be used."

"That will be very helpful, Liara, thank you," EDI said, and set it aside. "Tell me, have you lost your desire to repair the _Normandy_ and leave this world?"

Her expression instantly soured. "And go where, exactly? The Reapers are harvesting the galaxy right now. In a few decades, everything will go silent. Every planet that had civilization will be either empty or bombarded from orbit. Thessia is dead, Earth is dead, the Citadel is dead... there isn't even a Conduit we can reach that can take us there. It was the perfect trap, and we _failed_."

"Perhaps the Crucible _did_ fire, but we simply don't know that it did," Javik pointed out.

Liara sighed and sank back on her heels. "Maybe, but there simply isn't a way to know," she said. "We're going to be here the rest of our lives. Might as well get used to it."

When she next checked the trap, the piece of hull metal had been replaced with a crude, colorful trinket. She took it and replaced it with a tiny river stone. Perhaps it was one of their missing crew. Perhaps it was the creatures near the burrows. Perhaps it was something – or someone – else she hadn't yet seen. Not that it at all mattered, of course – it would be millennia before they could get civilization, unless there existed artifacts on this world they could find, like a beacon, to boost their technology.

Javik didn't recognize this world, he told her, but that didn't mean it wasn't part of the Empire at some point, or perhaps been the home of a slave rebellion, or some other incident.

Eventually, Liara realized that the valley the _Normandy_ had crashed it was not normal. Her eyes had been fooled by millennia of geological changes and the vegetation, but it was indeed not a normal formation. Instead, she eventually discerned, with the help of EDI's advanced optics and Javik's observation, that it had formed from the impact of some great mass flung with incredible force. It seemed to have either formed or expanded the sea in this part of the world, even, which excited her.

"Someone used to be here," she said. "At some point in the past, it's likely the Reapers came and attacked, so someone _used_ to be here." It didn't matter much, as the passing of time had covered anything they could have found near the surface, but it somehow gave her an odd sense of... _peace_.

"Millions of years ago," EDI observed, "just based on the observations I can make. It would have been many, many cycles ago. Whoever was here is gone now."

"It still happened," Liara said, knowing she sounded a little childish.

"I understand what you mean, Liara," Javik told her, and she looked at him, and smiled a little.

* * *

It took a long time – several years, in fact – before Liara dared reach out to her Prothean companion. Despite his constant presence, they both stayed at arm's length. For him, it was just Javik being himself, but for her, perhaps it was something else entirely, something she didn't know, or didn't want to know. Every day, she exchanged a trinket with the mysterious trapper. Every day, she scrounged for materials. Every day, she searched for signs of other surviving crew or Reapers. And every day, she let her guard down a little more.

She and Javik never really said it outright. It never came to that. They simply never felt like they needed to get to that point, just from what little she could gather from him.

But after a long day hunting, when she looked over where Garrus and Tali used to sit, then looked at the tally marks she had left so far, she could no longer take the quiet. EDI sat in the corner, picking at a rupture in her "skin" and making slow, careful repairs, not even looking up, and Liara went over to sit beside Javik and lean against his shoulder. The ancient armor was long ago, replaced by animal skins and pieces of hull metal that protected him from the elements and the predators.

"Hope you don't mind," she muttered, "but, please, let me know if you do."

Sitting near their little fire, he prodded at it with a spear he had carefully formed from sharp rocks taken near the sea. The land they had ended up in had been a bounty and a boon for them, despite the isolation, bestowing upon them enough meat, food, and water filtered by volcanic rock and basalt to keep them alive. Civilization was a million miles away, and she felt like she was a young archaeologist again. Perhaps that was why leaving civilization behind and the prospect of solitude didn't bother her all that much.

"You would know, asari," he told her, snorting to punctuate, but nudged her with his elbow and made no effort to dislodge her. Even hours later, when she abruptly woke from an unsettling dream, he still had not moved, staring deeply into the embers of the fire.

"What do you think of all this, Javik?" she murmured.

Lifting the spear off the cave floor, he jabbed it into the embers, causing sparks to float into the air and a _pop_ as a bit of sap flash-heated. "You need to be more specific."

"This." She waved her hands. "We survived the cycle, and now we're here."

"Hmm." Lowering the spear again, he looked at her. "In my cycle, survival was what we focused our efforts on every day. At any moment, our lives could be extinguished by the Reapers' implacable march. We knew this, and lived as though we did not even have a next hour." His lips curled in what his species called a "grin", which used to be unsettling, but now she just found amusing. "Not only am I the last prothean, but I survived even this cycle. To have done so, to _live_ now? That is fine enough."

"So, then, what about that book?" She prodded his side. "You going to write it with me now?"

Again, he snorted, but grinned wider. "Why not?"

She continued to make batteries and search for hope and live as best she could, under a sky that used to be alien, but was now one she could call "home". Together, they planned out the book, arguing over what to include, and she could smile and laugh again.

* * *

Decades later, long after she had fully settled into her new life, Liara buried the last Prothean on the hillside and marked his grave with a small pile of volcanic rock and river stones. For a long time, she knelt beside the fresh dirt with her hands buried in it, weeping silently. It was just her and EDI. Javik had left behind several volumes about the "asari and the prothean" he had helped co-write. They had settled on "Journeys with the Prothean" as a title – absolutely banal, she thought, but he, being Javik, had of course pointed out that it made perfect sense, and anything more flowery would have been ridiculous.

Liara stacked the volumes in the corner of her now-well-furnished cave. Animal skins, bones, rock, and anything else she could find had been used to make places to sleep, sit, and study. Keeping them clean, polished, and in good shape kept her hands busy, while continuing her work on power sources and scavenged technology kept her mind sharp. Occasionally, she even helped polish or repair EDI's body, which had changed from a sleek silvery shell to a patchwork of various textures and colors, some of it bearing the broken-up insignia of the _Normandy_ or the Alliance emblem.

"It looks like the original _Normandy_ crash site now," she mused. From the hillside near her friends, she could sit on a large rock and survey the ship's skeleton. Shepard had taken a few images of the SR-1 and shared it with them when he had returned to the ship. There had been many eyes not dry upon seeing it. He had brought them to her on her ship, and she, too, had felt tears at the sight of their old friend. Now, the SR-2 looked nearly as bad, most of its hull and components stripped away. Vines and moss had begun to creep over it, reclaiming it as part of the landscape. A bird had made its nest over the cockpit, fittingly.

"It is an unfortunate end for such a craft." EDI's voice was rougher now, sometimes flattening into a very robotic tone, her voice synthesizer worn from use, but she still functioned well enough. Barring any accidents, she would continue to function for many more decades, possibly centuries, though she and Liara both knew the body had not been built for such extensive, long-term use.

"Unfortunate, maybe," Liara said quietly, "but maybe just a little fitting. One day, some other civilization might find it and wonder at it, a marvel of the ancient past. Who knows?"

EDI seemed to consider this. "Perhaps."

* * *

Liara had to tangle with predators whenever she hunted away from the crash site. Hexapedal beasts roamed this part of the planet, several variants easily her size and several times her weight. It took skill and ingenuity to take them down, but she wore their skins and bones as prizes whenever she did. The meat was tender when cooked just right and very filling. If she mixed the blood in with a bit of water and dirt, then smeared it across her skin, the scent seemed to keep other predators at bay.

Eventually, Liara passed out of her maiden stage and entered the second third of her life. The sleekness of youth gave way. Her bones and joints stood out a little more from the life she now lived. Lean, strong muscle rippled under her weathered blue skin. Where she favored her right arm, the muscle there was more visible, stronger, with which she hefted spears and fired what weapons were still functional when needed.

As the centuries passed, EDI broke a little more, and Liara patched her up as best as she could, though she had begun to run low on the components to do so.

Nothing came from the sky, and she knew the harvest was long finished.

She had long ago stopped seeing trinkets left by the trap and stopped etching the passing days into the cave walls. Instead, she marked years, painting them on skins. Through a lot of experimentation and what little she could recall of survival skills from commandos she'd spoken to, she'd figured out how to dry hides enough to make a sort of parchment, inks and dyes to create with, lodge stones together to make sturdy structures, and she was able to find ways to preserve meat for the cooler, less verdant "winters" of the world.

With each passing decade, she ran out of another component to repair EDI with. EDI began to stay around the cave more often, rather than going out with her, but even then, her body continued to wear out.

Liara traveled to the hillside and talked to the graves, clearing the growth that tried to take over the headstones she had laid. She surveyed the _Normandy_ , watching in fascination as the land swallowed it up. A tree grew right in the middle of it and pushed so hard outward that it opened up the SR-2 like an egg. Vines and flowers overtook it, and things made the overgrown skeleton their home.

Sometimes, she wondered what would grow up next on Thessia. Would it be as Shepard had once mused to her and the yahg, with their vicious intelligence, take over the next cycle? Or would it be some species none of them had ever heard of? Would they also spring the trap? Or would they _listen_?

Eight hundred and seventy-three years, two months, and four days after their arrival on the planet, Liara heard EDI made an odd groaning sound before something exploded.

"Oh!" The matriarch scrambled to her feet and ran over to investigate the worn mech's body. When she pried away a panel, she found enough failed components to make the blood drain out of her. "Don't worry, EDI, I'm sure I can find something to repair you with."

"No, there is nothing you can use." EDI spoke, but some of the syllables were barely recognizable, coming out as data bursts instead, squelches of static that sounded like death. "We have run out of viable parts."

Liara dropped her hands. "Maybe the next civilization, then."

"It is possible they can." EDI smiled at her despite her cracked face and broken optics. "I will continue to function for as long as I can. You have done a great deal for me, Liara T'Soni, and I am grateful that I have continued to... live... all this time. Thank you."

Liara smiled and patted her shoulder. "Of course. You've been a good friend."

A year later, Liara could not power EDI up except for a single burst of life, so she dismantled the body, scavenged what parts she could, but left the mech's core programming hardware intact. Perhaps one day, the next civilization would find her, plug her in, and listen. EDI would be like a recording of the previous cycle. She could help them defeat the Reapers. Maybe.

* * *

One day, Liara walked out of her cave to find the bipedal creatures she had first run into hundreds of years ago, only now they wore skins and carried weapons. Though they could speak no language she could understand, they did not run at the sight of her, and instead stared curiously, looking her up and down. She smiled to herself. Perhaps these would be the rulers of the next cycle. As she neared the end of her expected lifespan, it was a comforting thought, knowing the future existed.

* * *

Millennia later, a child looked up at the mother standing beside them, from under a sky without Reapers, and asked, _did that all really happen?_

And the mother said, simply, _yes_.


End file.
